Quick pick: match your situation to a tool
Already know your situation? Match the line that sounds like you and jump to that tool.
A few people answer one number for support or sales: a shared team inbox, so look at marv.Inbox, Trengo, Chatwoot, or Respond.io.
Your main job is sending campaigns to opted-in lists: a broadcast tool, so look at Wati, AiSensy, Brevo, or Interakt.
You sell products inside the chat with a catalog and payments: SleekFlow.
Every rep keeps their own existing number and you want it in your CRM: TimelinesAI.
You need EU data residency, or email and voice alongside WhatsApp: Trengo.
You want to self-host and own your data: Chatwoot.
You are a developer building your own product or flows: Twilio, or 360dialog if you just need clean API access, with Infobip at enterprise scale.
You want no-code chatbots to qualify and route before a human steps in: Gallabox, or the builders inside Respond.io and SleekFlow.
Four kinds of WhatsApp business tool
Most of the confusion comes from one label covering four different products. Sort the field into these four and the choice gets a lot simpler.
Shared team inbox: many people answer one number, each conversation has an owner, and managers can see what is still open. These are built for handling, not sending. marv.Inbox, Trengo, Chatwoot, and Respond.io live here.
Broadcast and marketing: send Meta-approved template campaigns to opted-in lists, with simple chatbots and analytics. These are built for sending. Wati, AiSensy, Brevo, and Interakt live here.
No-code chatbot and flow builder: drag-and-drop automations that qualify, route, and answer without code. Gallabox is the clearest example, and SleekFlow and Respond.io carry strong builders too.
API and BSP infrastructure: the connection layer itself, for teams that build their own front end. 360dialog and Twilio are the usual picks, with Infobip at enterprise scale. One outlier sits outside all four: TimelinesAI links your existing phone number by QR instead of the official API, which is faster to start but a different risk profile.
The 14 tools, and who each one fits
marv.Inbox: a shared team inbox with a clear owner per conversation and SLA timers, on the official WhatsApp Business API plus Messenger, and it connects in Coexistence so you keep your existing number and app. Priced in flat tiers by team size, from $29 a month, with a 10-day trial. Best fit: WhatsApp-first teams running real conversations who want accountability, not just a shared login. Not ideal if your main job is mass marketing blasts. (This is our tool, and we have kept its row honest.)
Wati: WhatsApp broadcasts, templates, and a genuinely strong no-code chatbot. The catch most pages skip: the entry plan caps at three users with no paid add-on seats, so you jump to Pro sooner than you expect, and Wati adds roughly a 20% markup on Meta message rates. Best fit: small marketing teams that live on WhatsApp campaigns. Not ideal if you send at high volume, where that markup compounds.
Respond.io: the deepest workflow and AI-agent builder of the omnichannel set, across WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, SMS, and email. Pricing stacks plan plus seats plus Monthly Active Contacts, and the cheap ~$79 Starter has no automation at all, so any serious use needs the ~$159 Growth tier and the active-contact overages can climb. Best fit: teams orchestrating several channels through one automation engine. Not ideal if WhatsApp is your only channel and you want a flat bill.
Trengo: a European, EU-hosted shared inbox that pulls 10 or more channels, including email, voice, and live chat, into one place, and passes Meta message rates through at cost with no markup. The trade-off is a high floor: there is no cheap small-team tier, with plans starting around €299 a month for ten users. Best fit: mid-size service teams where email and voice matter as much as WhatsApp. Not ideal for a two or three person team.
SleekFlow: built for selling inside the chat, with a native catalog, in-chat payments, Shopify, and flow automation across WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram, and WeChat. Pricing meters Monthly Active Contacts, the WhatsApp number is hosted for a separate monthly fee, and the included contact allowances are low, so a contact-heavy month adds up. Best fit: social-commerce teams. Not ideal if you handle support rather than sell.
Interakt: a low-cost official-API tool aimed at D2C and Shopify SMBs, with broadcasts, a basic inbox, and commerce integrations. It charges a small plan plus a per-message markup over Meta rates. Best fit: small online stores starting WhatsApp marketing on a budget. Not ideal if you need deep team workflows or many channels.
Brevo: a broader marketing suite where WhatsApp sits next to email and SMS, so one tool covers several outbound channels. WhatsApp is billed per message on top of the plan. Best fit: teams that already run email and SMS marketing and want to add WhatsApp campaigns without a second vendor. Not ideal if you need a true shared inbox for two-way conversations.
AiSensy: low-cost WhatsApp campaign and broadcast tooling with a genuine free tier, popular with SMBs. Messages are billed separately and the advanced campaign features sit behind the paid plans, which are low-cost but priced regionally, so check your local rate. Best fit: budget-conscious teams focused on WhatsApp marketing. Not ideal as a full multi-channel support platform.
Gallabox: a no-code conversational workspace whose strength is its chatbot builder, used by a lot of SMBs and some recognisable brands. Paid plans are mid-priced plus Meta fees, and the entry tier caps the number of users. Best fit: teams that want to automate qualification and FAQs without code. Not ideal if you mostly need human agents in a shared queue.
TimelinesAI: the outlier. It links individual WhatsApp numbers by scanning a QR code, the same way WhatsApp Web works, with deep two-way CRM sync into HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce, and more, priced per seat. Because it rides the unofficial connection rather than the API, it is the fastest to set up but carries account-stability risk and no official template or broadcast guarantees. Best fit: sales teams where each rep keeps their own number and CRM sync is the point. Not ideal if compliance or reliable broadcasting matters.
Chatwoot: an open-source, self-hostable support inbox, free to run on your own servers (or a managed cloud billed per agent, with WhatsApp on the higher tiers). It is the inbox, not the connection, so you bring your own WhatsApp API access through a BSP and pay Meta directly with no platform markup. Best fit: teams that want data ownership and full control of their stack. Not ideal if you want WhatsApp set up for you, since you wire the API yourself.
360dialog: not an inbox at all, but a pure BSP, the licensed plumbing that connects you to Meta's API, known for a flat monthly fee per number (around €49) and no markup on message rates. Best fit: technical teams or other tools that just need clean, cheap, transparent API access. Not ideal if you want a ready-made agent interface, because there is not one.
Twilio: developer building blocks for WhatsApp and messaging, billed purely by usage at roughly $0.005 a message plus Meta fees, with no agent inbox out of the box. Best fit: engineering teams building their own messaging product or custom flows. Not ideal for a non-technical team that needs to start answering chats today.
Infobip: an enterprise CPaaS with WhatsApp among many channels, global reach, and usage-based, sales-led pricing. Best fit: large organisations that need scale, compliance, and many channels under one contract. Not ideal for an SMB that wants to self-serve and see a price online.
What these tools actually cost each month
A sticker price is only half the bill. On the official API you pay the platform plan, sometimes per seat or per active contact, and on top of that Meta charges for each template message you send (marketing, utility, or authentication), priced by country and category. Replies a customer starts are free for 24 hours. Here is the shape of three typical bills, so you can see which part actually dominates.
Small support team, three agents on one number, mostly answering inbound questions. The platform is a flat shared-inbox tier of a few tens of dollars a month, and Meta fees are close to zero because almost everything is a free reply inside the 24-hour window. The platform plan is basically the whole bill.
Online store sending 20,000 marketing templates a month. Now Meta's marketing-template fees are the bill, and the platform plan is a rounding error beside them. A tool that adds a markup on messages (Wati, around 20%) costs noticeably more here than one that passes Meta rates through at cost (360dialog or Trengo). Choose on message markup, not plan price.
Developer wiring WhatsApp into their own app, with no inbox to pay for. With Twilio you pay about $0.005 per message plus Meta's template fees; with 360dialog you pay a flat fee around €49 a month per number plus Meta rates at cost. At low volume the flat BSP fee can win; at high volume, compare both against your real send count.
Exact totals depend on your country's Meta template rates and your monthly volume, so treat these as the shape of the bill, not a quote. The pricing model, not the headline price, is what decides the winner.
How we compared them, and our bias
We judged each tool on the job it is built for rather than a feature checklist, because a feature grid makes a broadcast platform and a team inbox look interchangeable when they are not. For each one we checked four things: how it connects (the official WhatsApp Business API versus an unofficial personal-number link), the pricing model and any seat caps on the entry plan, how many channels it really covers, and where it breaks down as a team grows.
Our bias, stated plainly: we make marv.Inbox, a shared team inbox. We kept its row to the same facts we applied to everyone else, and the table and notes tell you when another tool fits your job better. Almost every other roundup you will find for this search is published by a vendor that puts itself at number one; that is the gap this page is trying to close.
On pricing: the figures here are 2026 entry points, last reviewed in June 2026, and they move. Seat caps, markups, and active-contact allowances change more often than headline prices, so we lead with the pricing model and treat the dollar number as a starting point to confirm on each vendor's current page.
